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Meredith Whitney Sees Big Job Cuts Coming to Wall Street

September 8, 2010 8:31 AM EDT
Meredith Whitney, who started the Meredith Whitney Group, said Tuesday that the as many as 80,000 jobs will be cut by securities firms in the next 18 months as revenue growth slows.

The reductions forecasted by Whitney would be about 10 percent of the current levels and will occur following the 2010 compensation payment. The former Oppenheimer & Co. analyst added that the payments will be "down dramatically."

Whitney gained Wall Street notoriety in 2007 when she accurately predicted the dividend cut by Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C).

“The key product drivers of Wall Street’s revenues and profits over the past decade have been in a structural decline over the past three years,” Whitney said in a report. "2010 marks the first year in many in which Wall Street-centric firms will go through structural changes."

Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS), Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE: CS) and Royal Bank of Scotland PLC (NYSE: RBS) are seen as candidates to lead the slowdown in hiring in Europe, as the boom for fixed-income trading disappears.

Whitney notes that the new financial regulatory reform will force some of these shifts, but the declining revenue in businesses will lead to a "deeper secular change."

Whitney sees the continuing expansion in emerging markets as not being strong enough to offset the declines in U.S. and Europe.


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Credit Suisse, Citi, Barclays, Meredith Whitney, Dividend, Layoffs